Since You've Been Gone
by We No Longer Speak
Summary: Companion to Without John, prequel to a longer work. John while Sherlock was dead.


_I miss you. I miss all the things you did that annoyed the shit out of me at the time. I'd do anything to hear you playing with my gun. My fridge has never had anything in it more interesting than last week's takeaway and it's boring. I'm boring._

_The whole fucking WORLD is boring since you've been gone._

"It isn't healthy to continue this pattern, John."

It was raining. The therapist's office was cool and dim. It was soothing. John was only half listening.

He was practicing.

Around him observations swirled.

_She was up late last night. Red wine. Unhappy, had a fight with someone important… __husband boyfriend__father__. Wasn't paying attention while dressing this morning. In a hurry. Slept on the sofa, a corduroy sofa. She has a __cat __dog. Border Collie. Old. Had too much coffee this morning to compensate for the late night, watching the clock and glancing at the phone – expecting someone to call…_

John was aware he'd lost his mind. He always been told you didn't know, but you did.

He was aware everything he did was crazy and largely a waste of time. Sherlock was dead. It didn't matter what he did now. Nothing would ever matter again. But he got up every day and worked on the project.

Because right now it was better than anything else he could come up with.

John's schedule went precisely as follows:

6:00

Get up. Hydrate. Parkour-style run approx. 10 Kilometers, 1 hour (including cool down.)

Shower

Breakfast

9:00

Arrive at library, central branch. Study.

12:00

Eat lunch in the park and practice observing.

1:00

Arrive at MMA school. Train.

5:00

Arrive home. Study Sherlock's books, journals and notes

7:00

Eat dinner while watching mindless telly

7:30

Continue studying

10:00

Go to bed. Have broken, nightmare-ridden sleep.

Repeat

It kept him physically and mentally exhausted at all times. This was essential. It left him no time to dwell.

But he dreamed about Sherlock every single night.

He dreamed about good times, bad times, the Worst Time and times that never happened. But Sherlock was always himself, unchanged by John's dream mind. It was as if even his subconscious didn't dare do such a thing.

Sherlock was always with him when he was asleep. This was the best and worst thing. He woke up every morning and cried. Then blew his nose, got up and got to work on the project.

The project had no specific goal. Studying things Sherlock had known made John feel like he was still there. The facts and the observations made him feel less lonely and took up all the empty space in his life. There was so much space now. There was so much time.

When John considered that he could potentially live for another fifty or sixty years, he thought about the war. He thought about Kandahar and how it would be easy to go and not come back. No one would ever call it suicide.

John tried very hard not to think about the future at all. He stared at facts instead and pounded them into his brain, even using mild nootropics he found on the internet. Nothing dangerous or illegal, but most of it surprisingly effective. It was startling that the racetam-type drugs didn't have more of a following. If he still did clinic duty, he'd have been prescribing them to elderly patients right and left.

He no longer practiced though. He'd never even gone back to the clinic to collect his things. Sarah had brought them with big, sad eyes.

John held on to pieces of Sherlock. Every single piece he could find or create within himself. He would never let them go.

_._

_They say time helps. It's been 7 months and it hurts just as much today as when it happened. They fucking lie._

_Thinking about all those times I corrected people when they thought we were a couple now makes me cringe. I wish I hadn't. Isn't that ridiculous?_

_We were a fucked up, non-sexual, co-dependant mess of a couple and I was just in denial. I don't think you were, though. I think that's why you never even mentioned it. You were waiting for me to finally catch on. I'm sorry I'm such an idiot. I'm sorry about all those women I had before Jeanette gave me a clue. I'm sorry TO them for wasting their time._

_I think you were the love of my life._

_What do I do now?_

When John did allow his thoughts to settle and he inevitably turned them to the past. For John the future didn't matter.

But the past held Sherlock in all his glory and sometimes John just relived as much of it could remember. Over and over again the painful moments and the funny moments and all the times he could have been more patient, explained more, gotten less embarrassed.

_I should have stayed with him the whole time he was drugged. I shouldn't have left him alone with The Woman to begin with. I should have protected him. He needed me to protect him from her. He needed me to protect him from his own dangerous curiosity._

_I should have been more patient when he was afraid and drugged at the inn. He says terrible things all the time. He isn't cruel, he just lacks tact. I shouldn't have taken it to heart and stormed off. I should have sat there and calmed him down._

_Said terrible things. Wasn't cruel. He lacked tact. Past tense. Always past tense._

Before he went to sleep every night, John Watson saved Sherlock Holmes. After he collapsed into bed and it was dark and as quiet as it ever got in council housing, he came up with a dozen ways he could have prevented Sherlock's death.

Moriarty died screaming so many times. John would have made it last.

Each time Sherlock would look at him, the strain of his plans falling away from his face. He looked at John with pride and relief. Then instead of dying he treated John to a curry. Instead of bleeding all over the street, Sherlock popped his overcoat collar and hailed a cab.

Later they went home and Sherlock played his violin and John listened.

John no longer had a home. He had a cheap basement flat that he slept in. Sherlock was home. Sherlock and his skull and the body parts in the fridge, Mrs. Hudson and the smiley face with the bullet holes.

Sherlock's violin lived in John's bedroom now, silent in its case. No one would ever play it again. It hurt John to even look at it but he took it out every few days and polished it for no reason. He rosined the bow like Sherlock would do and even plucked the strings. Then he put it back in the velvet-lined box and cried.

_I go out to the pub with Greg at least once a week, like I used to. I'm not sure which one of us needs it more. He really does have the worst taste in women._

_(That's LESTRADE in case you forgot. You have a habit of deleting things like that.)_

_I talk to you in my head. Sometimes you answer. I'm pretty sure I'm mad. But you're dead so it doesn't matter._

The MMA gym was John's best discovery. There he could go in and pound the living daylights out of someone ten years younger than himself and instead of getting arrested, get patted on the back.

There he studied Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing and Judo. He was constantly bruised and nursing at least one minor soft tissue injury. It was perfect.

You couldn't think about anything much when someone was trying to choke you unconscious.

John was reading a Richard Dawkins book as he moved back and forth on the foam roller, his back needing the myofiscal relief. The knock at the door was odd but no unusual. Sometimes Greg stopped by after his shift for the company. At first John had internally bristled at such a sensation of being watched. He'd quickly realized that Greg was possibly lonelier than he was and promptly stopped minding.

He marked his place in The Greatest Show on Earth and got up stiffly.

Two steps to the door, take the gun off the shelf just in case. He casually let the gun hand point toward the floor and drift a bit behind him, concealing the contents.

He opened the door.


End file.
